Smoke and Mirrors

Abstract

Smoke and Mirrors This essay explores the author's budding mystical relation, still in early development, with the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca. The first part of the text is comprised of two parallel narratives mirroring each other, one human, the other divine. The twin journeys begin at the mutilating event of birth, followed by a scattering of the resulting fragments. The pieces are joined together through the mimetic practices of divine personification, devotional fiction, and the making of fetishes. At each step, anthropological and psychoanalytical approaches are blended with revelations through dreams and waking visions, both approaches held in equal esteem.